Dual wavelength thermal flux laser anneal

ABSTRACT

A thermal processing apparatus and method in which a first laser source, for example, a CO 2  emitting at 10.6 μm is focused onto a silicon wafer as a line beam and a second laser source, for example, a GaAs laser bar emitting at 808 nm is focused onto the wafer as a larger beam surrounding the line beam. The two beams are scanned in synchronism in the direction of the narrow dimension of the line beam to create a narrow heating pulse from the line beam when activated by the larger beam. The energy of GaAs radiation is greater than the silicon bandgap energy and creates free carriers. The energy of the CO 2  radiation is less than the silicon bandgap energy so silicon is otherwise transparent to it, but the long wavelength radiation is absorbed by the free carriers.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates generally to thermal processing of semiconductorsubstrates. In particular, the invention relates to laser thermalprocessing of semiconductor substrates in which a line beam is scannedacross the substrate.

BACKGROUND ART

The fabrication of semiconductor integrated circuits has long requiredmultiple steps of thermal processing a silicon wafer or othersemiconductor wafer. The wafer may need to be raised to a temperature of600° C. or well above to thermally activate a process. Such processes,though not so limited, may include chemical vapor deposition,silicidation, oxidation or nitridation, implant anneal, and dopantactivation among others. Some of these processes may requiretemperatures in excess of 1000° C., 1200° C., or even above 1350° C.,the last of which is relatively close to the melting point 1416° C. ofsilicon.

Such thermal processing was originally performed in ovens typicallycontaining many wafers supported in a fixture. Electrical power isapplied to resistive heater elements in the oven walls to heat them to atemperature close to the desired processing temperature. The waferseventually assume a temperature substantially equal to that of the ovenwalls. After the desired length of thermal processing at the elevatedtemperature, no more power is applied to the resistance heaters so thatthe walls gradually cool, as do the wafers. Both the heat-up rates andthe cool-down rates are relatively slow, on the order of 15° C./min eventhough the required thermal processing time may be relatively short.Such long periods at elevated temperatures substantially increase thethermal budget required for thermal processing. The fine features andthin layers in advanced integrated circuits require that the thermalbudget be reduced.

Rapid thermal processing (RTP) has been developed to increase thecooling and heating rates. An RTP chamber typically contains a largenumber of high-intensity halogen lamps directed at a single wafer. Thelamps can be quickly turned on to their highest filament temperature toquickly heat the wafer with little heating of the chamber itself. Whenthe lamps are turned off, the portion of the lamps at the highesttemperature constitutes a relatively small mass, which can quickly cool.The RTP chamber walls are not heated to very high temperatures. As aresult, the wafer can radiatively cool at a reasonably high coolingrate. A typical RTP heat-up rate is about 250° C./s and a typical RTPcool-down rate is about 90° C./s, thus drastically reducing the thermalbudget. In a technique called spike annealing, there is essentially nosoak time at the maximum temperature. Instead, the ramp up isimmediately followed by a ramp down. In most situations, the ramp ratesshould be maximized.

However, the cooling and heating rates of RTP and even spike annealingare becoming insufficient for advanced devices having ultra-narrowfeatures and shallow and abrupt junctions, both of which require precisethermal control. Both ovens and RTP heat an entire wafer to the requiredprocessing temperature. In fact, only the upper few microns of materialat the wafer surface require thermal processing. Furthermore, theblanket thermal irradiation pattern of RTP requires cooling of theentire wafer from the annealing temperature, both by radiative andconductive heat transfer. The radiative cooling becomes less effectiveas the wafer cools.

Pulsed laser thermal processing has been developed to dramaticallyincrease the heating and cooling rates. Short (about 20 ns) pulses oflaser radiation are focused at a reduced area of the wafer, ideally thesame size as the optical stepper field in the neighborhood of 20 mm by30 mm. The total energy of the laser pulse is sufficient to immediatelyheat the surface of the irradiated area to a high temperature.Thereafter, the small volume of heat generated by the shallow laserpulse quickly diffuses into the unheated lower portions of the wafer,thereby greatly increasing the cooling rate of the irradiated surfaceregion. Several types of high-power lasers can be pulsed at a repetitionrate of hundreds of pulses per second. The laser is moved in astep-and-repeat pattern over the surface of the wafer and is pulsed inneighboring areas to similarly thermally process the entire wafersurface.

Pulsed laser thermal processing, however, presents uniformity problemsarising in part from the short, intense radiation pulses on a patternedsurface. The scanning and pulses need to be carefully aligned andneither the radiation profile nor the lateral heat diffusion pattern isflat. The radiation pulse is so short that any difference in absorptionwill result in a large difference in temperature. One portion of thestructure may melt while another portion a micron away is barely heated.To address this problem, a new class of laser thermal processingequipment has been developed in which a narrow line beam of continuouswave (CW) laser radiation having a long dimension and a short dimensionis scanned over the wafer in a direction along the short dimension, thatis, perpendicular to the line. The line width is small enough and thescan speed high enough that the scanned line of radiation produces avery short thermal pulse at the surface, which thereafter quicklydiffuses vertically into the substrate and horizontally tolower-temperature surface regions. The process may be referred to asthermal flux annealing.

The three types of annealing can be distinguished in thermodynamicalterms. RTP and thermal annealing are isothermal processes in which everyregion of the wafer is at essentially the same temperature at a giventime. Pulsed laser annealing is adiabatic. The radiation pulse has endedbefore any heat can significantly diffuse. Thermal flux annealing isfaster than the isothermal RTP process but slower than the adiabaticpulsed process. Heat has a thermal diffusion length of between 5 and 100μm in conventional electronic materials, a length which allows somethermal homogenization on the scale of integrated circuit patterning.

MarkLe et al. (hereafter Markle) discloses a reflective-optics versionof such a linear scanning thermal processing system in U.S. Pat. No.6,531,681. Jennings et al. (hereafter Jennings) disclosesrefractive-optics versions in U.S. Published Application 2003/0196996,although there are other substantial differences between Markle andJennings. In some embodiments, the Jennings thermal apparatus canachieve ramp rates of 10⁶ ° C./s with beam line widths of less than 100μm.

However, both Markle and Jennings prefer the use of laser diode barslined up along the long direction of the beam to produce laser radiationThese laser diode bars are typically composed of GaAs or similarsemiconductor materials and are composed of a number of diode lasersformed in a same layer of an opto-electronic chip. The GaAs laser barspreferred by Markle emit near-infrared radiation at a wavelength ofabout 808 nm, which couples well into silicon. As illustrated in theenergy band diagram of FIG. 1, semiconducting silicon like mostsemiconductors has a valence band 10 of electron states with energieslower than E_(v) and a conduction band 12 of electron states at energiesabove E_(c). In direct bandgap semiconductors, a bandgap 14 of energyE_(g) separates the valence and conduction bands 10, 12. In undopedsilicon, no electron states exist in the bandgap 14. For silicon,E_(g)=1.12 eV, which corresponds to an optical wavelength λ_(g) of 1110nm according to the well known photon equation

${E = \frac{hc}{\lambda}},$where h is Planck's constant and c is the speed of light. At atemperature of absolute zero in an indirect-bandgap semiconductor suchas silicon, the valence band 10 is completely filled and the valenceband 12 is completely empty.

Light having a photon energy of E_(P) passing through such asemiconductor will interact with the electrons only if its photon energyis greater than or equal to the bandgap,E_(P)≧E_(g)so that the photon can excite an electron in the valence band 10 to theconduction band 12, where it is a free carrier. Once the electron is inthe conduction band, it quickly thermalizes and heats the semiconductorbody.

The situation changes when the silicon is heated to a high temperatureat which thermal energy excites electrons from the valence band 10 tothe conduction band 12 leaving holes (empty electron states) in thevalence band 10 and electrons in the conduction band 12, both of whichare free carriers. Lower energy photons can excite valence electronsinto the holes within the valence band 10 or can excite thermallyexcited conduction electrons into the generally empty states within theconduction band 12. However, this effect is generally small below about800° C. Another effect arises when the semiconductor is doped, eitherwith n-type dopants to produce electron states 16 within the bandgap butclose to the conduction band 12 or with p-type dopants to produce holestates 18 close to the valence band 10. These dopant states areimportant for the operation of semiconductors because at moderatetemperatures they are sufficient to excite the electron states 16 intothe conduction band 12 or hole states into the valence band 10 (whichcan be visualized alternatively as exciting a valence electron into thehole state 18). Lower-energy photons can interact with such exciteddopants states. For example, intra-band transitions resulting inabsorption of the incident radiation may occur between two free-carrierstates within the valence band 10 or within the conduction band 12.However, the absorption provided by this effect is relatively smallbelow doping levels of about 10¹⁸ cm⁻³, far above the average dopinglevel in semiconductor devices. In any case, the laser absorption shouldnot critically depend upon temperature and the doping level of theirradiated area, as is the situation with intra-band absorption betweenfree carriers. It is preferred to rely on inter-band transitions forlaser heating rather than upon intra-band absorption involving freecarriers for which temperature and doping levels have profound effects.

Hence, laser radiation for rapidly heating silicon should have awavelength substantially less than 1110 nm, which is easily provided byGaAs diode laser. Diode lasers, however, suffer several drawbacks. Laserbars create a problem in focusing their output into a beam uniform alongits length. The radiation from a laser bar is output separately from anumber of diode lasers spaced along the length of the bar with gapsbetween them. That is, the linear uniformity at the laser source is notgood and needs to be improved by an homogenizer. The technology forhomogenizers is available, but applying them to high intensity beamspresents engineering and operational problems. A further problem is thatlaser bar radiation at 808 nm has an absorption depth of about 800 nm insilicon, which may be greater than the depth of the silicon layerrequiring annealing, such as shallow source and drain implants needingimplant curing and dopant activation.

In U.S. Pat. No. 6,747,245, Talwar et al. (hereafter Talwar) hassuggested using radiation from a carbon dioxide (CO₂) laser to produceline beams for laser thermal processing. Although CO₂ lasers have alower efficiency (10 to 15%) than diode lasers (40 to 50%), they canmore easily produce a well collimated (non-divergent) and generallycircular beam. However, we believe that CO₂ radiation having awavelength of about 10.6 μm is ineffective as the sole source of laserradiation since the 10.6 μm wavelength is much greater than the siliconbandgap wavelength of 1.11 μm. As a result, undoped or low-temperaturesilicon is virtually transparent to CO₂ radiation and the CO₂ radiationis not effectively absorbed in a silicon wafer, more or less its shallowsurface region desired for advanced microprocessing. Although notdisclosed by Markle, absorption of the CO₂ radiation may be enhanced byheating the silicon to either to a very high temperature or by relyingupon heavy doping or a combination thereof However, the heatingapparatus complicates the laser thermal processing apparatus, and thedoping levels cannot be freely controlled in semiconductor fabricationand vary across the partially developed integrated circuit.

Boyd et al. (hereafter Boyd) have disclosed a dual-wavelength thermalprocessing technique in “Absorption of infrared radiation in silicon,”Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 55, no. 8, 15 Apr. 1984, pp. 3061-3063.Boyd emphasizes that the quantum energy of 10.6 μm radiation is twoorders of magnitude smaller than the silicon bandgap. As a result,silicon is essentially transparent to CO₂ radiation. Even for heavilydoped silicon, the absorption coefficient is less than 100 cm⁻¹, a valuetoo small for surface laser thermal processing. Instead, Boyd proposeseither pre-heating the silicon or more preferably irradiating thesilicon with 500 nm radiation from a CW argon laser, having an energygreater than the bandgap, to increase the free carrier density insilicon and promote absorption of CO₂ radiation. Boyd does not addressthe spatial extent of his beams and admits to poor spatial definition,issues that are crucial for advanced laser thermal processing.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A thermal processing apparatus particularly useful for thermal treatmentof semiconductor integrated circuits formed on a wafer includes a firstlaser source emitting at a short wavelength, for example, less than 1.0μm and a second laser source emitting at a long wavelength, for example,greater than 1.2 μm, preferably greater than 5 μm, and most preferablyCO₂ laser radiation of wavelength near 10.6 μm. The heating beam fromthe second source is imaged into a relatively narrow line beam on thewafer, for example, having a width of no more than 0.1 mm and a lengthof at least 1 mm. The activating beam from the first source is imagedinto a relatively large beam on the wafer that surrounds the line beamfrom the second source. The two beams are scanned in synchronism in thedirection of the narrow dimension of the line beam either by movement ofthe wafer or movement of the optics.

Another aspect of the invention includes an acousto-optical modulatorwhich can be used either to remove inhomogeneity or speckle in anoptical beam or for scanning a narrow beam perpendicular to the physicalscanning direction to create a line pattern of radiation.

The heating beam may effectively radiate the sample at angles near 40°off normal.

A further aspect of the invention includes the optics used to form ahomogeneous line beam. A one-axis light pipe may be used for thispurpose.

A CCD array may thermally image the vicinity being irradiated.

The wavelength of the activating light may be selected to control thedepth of heating the substrate.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of electronic energy bands and opticaltransitions in a semiconductor.

FIG. 2 is a schematic elevations view of an embodiment of adual-wavelength laser annealing apparatus of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a plan view of the outline of a heating beam and an activatingbeam striking a wafer being laser annealed.

FIG. 4 is a cross-sectional view of a silicon structure to which theinvention can be applied.

FIG. 5 is an orthographic view of the annealing apparatus of FIG. 2including more of the optical elements.

FIG. 6 is an exploded orthographic view of the two beams striking thewafer.

FIG. 7 is an orthographic view of the optics of another embodiment ofthe invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

A simplified representation of one embodiment of the invention isschematically illustrated in the elevational view of FIG. 2. A wafer 20or other substrate is held on a stage 22 that is motor driven in one ortwo directions under the control of a system controller 24. Ashort-wavelength laser 26, such as a GaAs laser bar, emits a visible ornearly visible continuous wave (CW) beam 28 at a wavelength which isshorter than the silicon bandgap wavelength of about 1.11 μm. For theGaAs laser 26, the emission wavelength is typically about 810 nm, whichcan be characterized as red. First optics 30 focus and shape the beam 28and a reflector 32 redirects the beam 28 towards the wafer 20 in arelatively wide activating beam 34, also illustrated in the plan view ofFIG. 3. The activating beam 34 may be inclined at some angle, forexample, of 15° with respect to the wafer normal to prevent reflectionback to the GaAs laser 26. Such reflected radiation may shorten thelifetime of diode lasers. A long-wavelength laser 40, preferably a CO₂laser, emits an infrared CW beam 42 at a wavelength longer than thesilicon bandgap wavelength of 1.11 μm. For the preferred CO₂ laser, theemission wavelength is near 10.6 μm. Second optics 44 focus andpreferably shape the CO₂ beam 42 and a second reflector 46 reflects theCO₂ beam 42 into a relatively narrow heating beam 48. Preferably, theCO₂ heating beam 48 is inclined at the Brewster angle, which is about72° for silicon, with respect to the wafer normal so as to maximizecoupling of the heating beam 48 into the wafer 20. Incidence at theBrewster angle is most effective for p-polarized radiation, that is,radiation polarized along the surface of the wafer 20 since there is noreflected radiation arising from the fact that there is a 90° anglebetween the refracted beam in the wafer 20 and any reflected beam.Therefore, s-polarized light is advantageously suppressed overp-polarized light in the CO₂ beam 18. However, experiments have shownthat a 20° cone of radiation centered at 40° (±10°) from the wafernormal results in a variability of absorption about 3.5% for a number ofpatterns that is nearly as good as the 2.0% achieved with a conecentered at the Brewster angle.

As illustrated in FIG. 3, the long-wavelength (CO₂) heating beam 48 islocated within and preferably centered on the larger short-wavelength(visible) activating beam 34. Both beams 34, 48 are synchronouslyscanned across the wafer 20 as the stage 22 moves the wafer 20 relativeto the optical source 50 comprising the lasers 26, 40 and opticalelements 30, 32, 44, 46. It is alternatively possible that the wafer 20is held stationary while an actuator 52 moves all or part of the opticalsource 50 in one or two directions parallel to the surface of the wafer20 in accordance to signals from the controller 24.

The beam shapes on the wafer 20 are substantially rectangular or atleast highly elliptical for both the infrared heating beam 48 and thevisible activating beam 34. It is understood that the illustrated beamshapes are schematic and represent some fraction of the center intensitysince the beams in fact have finite tails extending beyond theillustrated shapes. Further, the infrared beam 48 is preferably nearlycentered on the larger visible beam 34 as both beams 34, 48 aresimultaneously moved relative to the wafer 20.

The general effect is that the larger visible beam 34, which is sharplyattenuated in the silicon, generates free carriers in a somewhat largeregion generally close to the wafer surface. The smaller infrared beam48, which otherwise is not absorbed by the unirradiated silicon,interacts with the free carriers generated by the visible beam 34 andits long-wavelength radiation is efficiently absorbed and converted toheat, thereby quickly raising the temperature in the area of theinfrared beam 48.

The temperature ramp rates and scanning speeds are primarily determinedby the size of the small infrared beam 48 while the larger visible beam34 should encompass the small infrared beam 48. The width of the smallheating beam 48 in the scan direction determines in part the temperatureramp rate and is minimized in most applications. The length of the smallheating beam 48 perpendicular to the scan direction should be largeenough to extend over a sizable fraction of the wafer and thus to annealthe sizable fraction in one pass. Typically, the length of the line beamis at least ten times its width. Optimally, the length equals orslightly exceeds the wafer diameter. However, for commercially feasibleapplications, the length may be on the order of millimeters. Anexemplary size of the small heating beam 48 on the wafer is 0.1 mm×1 mmalthough other sizes may be used. Smaller widths are generally moredesirable, for example, less than 500 μm or less than 175 μm. The largeractivating beam 34 may be larger than the heating beam 48 by, forexample, 1 mm so that in the exemplary set of dimensions it would extendabout 1 mm in the scan direction and a few millimeters in theperpendicular direction.

The dual wavelengths produce the result that more infrared absorption isconcentrated in the surface region in which the visible radiation isabsorbed. The depth of the surface region is less than the absorptionlength of CO₂ radiation by itself. The room-temperature attenuationdepth of visible radiation in silicon rapidly decreases in the visiblespectrum with decreasing wavelength, for example, an absorption depth ofabout 10 μm for 800 nm radiation, 3 μm for 600 nm radiation and about 1μm for 500 nm. Accordingly, the shorter activation wavelengths areadvantageous for generating free carriers only very near the wafersurface to confine the heating to near the surface. Thus, for someapplications, an even shorter activating wavelength is desired, such as532 nm radiation from a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser, which can becharacterized as green.

Although it is possible to modify the apparatus of Markle or Jenningsfor single beam irradiation with a shorter wavelength, it is difficultto obtain high power with these shorter wavelengths, particularly fromdiode lasers. In contrast, with the dual beams, the short wavelengthradiation is used only for generating free carriers and thus activatingthe absorption of the long wavelength radiation and thus does not needbe high powered.

It is preferred that the infrared absorption be dominated by freecarriers which have been generated at the surface of the wafer by theshorter wavelength laser. This effectively gives the 10.6 micronradiation the same absorption length as the shorter wavelength. It isalso preferred that the shorter-wavelength radiation creates asubstantial number of free carriers such that the infrared absorption isstill saturated even when optical interference effects reduce theshorter wavelength's transmission into the wafer. Optical interferenceeffects can reduce the power admitted into the wafer by as much as 80%for certain film stacks that are in use today in the semiconductorindustry. This requires that the infrared free carrier absorption effectis saturated when only 20% of the shorter-wavelength laser's poweractually propagates into the wafer. The shorter-wavelength laser's powerdensity must be at least five times the saturation value but it mustalso not be so high as to contribute appreciably to the direct heatingof the substrate. With the present invention, it is possible that thepower density of the shorter-wavelength radiation is more than adequateto assure saturated infrared absorption yet it is much less than thepower density of the CO₂ laser. Therefore, the shorter wavelength doesnot contribute to the heating of the wafer and subsequently does notdegrade the uniformity of heating. This effect is advantageous sincethere is a large variability in admitted power for the shorterwavelength.

Although various operational parameters may be used, the followingexemplary values are illustrative. The CO₂ laser may have a totaloptical output power of 100 W, which after focusing and beam shapingirradiates the wafer with an optical power density of about 150 kW/cm².In contrast, the visible laser is effective with an optical output powerof 1 to 2 W. The CO₂ beam striking the wafer may have a width of 50 μmand a length of 100 μm to 1 mm. With these short line widths, the CO₂beam needs to be scanned in a serpentine pattern to cover the entirewafer.

Although the invention is not so limited, a red activating beam ispreferred rather than green to process some types of advanced integratedcircuits having a structure near the surface illustrated in thecross-sectional view of FIG. 4. A silicon wafer 60 having a thin surfaceimplant layer 62 requiring anneal is covered with an amorphous siliconlayer 64 having a thickness of about 50 nm. Green activation radiation66, for example, from a Nd:YAG laser, incident upon the top surface isabsorbed by the amorphous silicon layer 64, but the free carriersgenerated quickly recombine because of the disordered state in theamorphous material. The high recombination rate greatly reduces the freecarrier concentration and hence the absorption of the 10.6 μm radiationby the free carriers. As a result, those regions manifest very longabsorption lengths for the 10.6 μm light and the substrate is noteffectively heated in those regions. As a result, the direct heating isconcentrated in the amorphous layer 64 and is not efficient. Incontrast, red activation radiation 66, for example, from a GaAs laserbar, is only partially absorbed in the amorphous layer 64, and the bulkof the remaining portion is absorbed in the top few microns of thesilicon 60, where the lifetimes of the free carriers is high, thusassuring strong absorption of the 10.6 μm CO₂ radiation. It is thus seenthat the depth of thermal treatment within the wafer can be controlledby selecting the wavelength of the activating light. A shorterwavelength is absorbed closer to the surface and hence promotesannealing there while a longer wavelength is absorbed more deeply andextends the thermal annealing to those depths. A shallow heating regionis particularly important for annealing ultra-shallow dopant implantsused in advanced devices.

The optics illustrated in FIG. 2 are overly simplified. A more completeset of optics is illustrated in FIG. 5 although several other opticalelements will be described separately. A blow up of the beam area isshown in FIG. 6. The optics of the activation beam emanating from theGaAs laser 26 are relatively simple. Relay optics including two lenses70, 72 produce the desirable overlap of the sub-beams from the differentGaAs diode lasers of the laser bar. Complete homogenization is notrequired if the free carriers are saturated. Additional free carrierscannot increase the infrared absorption above 100%. A tiltedinterference mirror 74 deflects the 810 nm radiation of the red GaAslaser 26 to strike the wafer 20 at approximately a normal angle.However, the interference mirror 74, particularly in the reversedirection, passes longer infrared radiation indicative of the wafertemperature to a pyrometer 76, which may be a single detector or a CCD(charge coupled device) array. In the latter case, a thermal image invicinity of the radiation line is available. An objective lens 78focuses the red beam 28 onto the wafer 20 as the activating beam 34. Asillustrated, the focused activating beam 34 has a generally rectangularshape arising from the linear array of diode lasers in the GaAs laserbar. The same objective lens 78 collimates longer wavelength lightemitted over a large angle, e.g. a 15° cone half angle, from the area ofthe wafer 20 being scanned. The reflector 74 is relatively transmissiveat the longer wavelength and passes the collimated infrared beam.Another objective lens 80 focuses the infrared beam on the pyrometer 76,thus allowing real-time monitoring of the maximum temperature reached onthe wafer 20. The wavelength of the pyrometer 76 may be selected fromwavelengths between 0.96 and 2.5 μm, with 1.55 μm being the preferredwavelength. Glasses used to make lenses at these wavelengths typicallyabsorb 10.6 μm radiation and thus effectively filter it out. Any CO₂radiation at 10.6 μm would need to scatter into the pyrometer 76.Because scattering is inversely proportional to wavelength, thepyrometer 76 is not sensitive to the CO₂ radiation.

The output of the CO₂ laser 40 passes through optics, to be described inmore detailed later, including a 1-axis light pipe 82 including twoparallel reflectors 84, 86 separated by a small gap aligned along thefast axis and extending along the beam axis and in the transversedirection along the slow axis. The fast axis refers to the axis of theheating beam on the wafer along which the line is quickly scanned, thatis, the short dimension of the line beam. The slow axis refers to thetransverse axis along which the beam is indexed in discretedisplacements between steps of the serpentine scan, that is, the longdimension of the line beam. Any reflector introduced into the light pathcauses the fast and slow axes to be reoriented accordingly. The lightpipe 82 causes the beam to homogenize along the slow (long) axis byspreading out the coherence speckle by about a factor of 200×, bysimilarly improving beam uniformity, and by flattening the beam shapealong that axis. Anamorphic optics 88, that is, a lens system havingdifferent focal lengths along the fast and slow axes, allows diffractionlimited focusing along fast axis while not so limiting the line beamlength along the slow axis. A reflector 90 is oriented to direct the CO₂beam 48 to strike the wafer 20 at the Brewster angle, which is about 72°from the normal for silicon, to maximize coupling of the CO₂ beam 48into the wafer 20 when the beam has p linear polarization, that is, thebeam polarization perpendicular to the beam polarization directionwithin the plane of the wafer 20.

A related embodiment is illustrated in FIG. 7. An acousto-opticaldeflector (AOD) 94 receives the optical output beam 48 from the CO₂laser 42. The AOD 94 includes, for example, a germanium crystal havingan ultrasonic transducer bonded on one end and an absorber. An RF signalelectrically drives the transducer with an oscillatory signal of 20MHz±5 MHz to modulate the density of the germanium and set up aninterference grating that diffracts about 80% of the incident light by,for example, about 5° from the incident direction dependent upon thedrive frequency. The drive frequency is further varied at 1 MHz acrossthe 10 MHz band to vary the diffraction angle and thus deflect anddither the beam along in the slow axis over a range of about 1°, thatis, to angularly or spatially scan the beam. The AOD scanning spreadsout the coherence speckle and interference fringes in the laser beam bya factor of about 200× and further homogenizes the beam along the slowaxis.

In a further variation, it is possible in some applications to input asmall single beam into the AOD 94 and use the AOD 94 to scan the smallbeam over the entire length of the heating beam 48 along the slow axis.

A first 45° phase retarding mirror 98 reflects the beam and converts itfrom linear to circular polarization. A second 45° phase retardingmirror 100 reflects the beam and converts it from circular to linearpolarization but with a net rotation of 90° between the two mirrors 98,100. A cylindrical lens 102 acts in conjunction with a later cylindricallens as a beam expander.

The CO₂ beam then enters the 1-axis light pipe 82 with the two parallelreflectors 84, 86 separated along the slow axis and extending along thebeam axis. The acousto-optical deflector 94 scans the beam in thedirection across the light pipe gap, that is, from right to left of thetwo reflectors 84, 86 over an angular range of about 20 mrad (about 1°).The scanned beam then enters the anamorphic optics 88, the first lens ofwhich is cylindrical and acts as part of the beam expander. Two turningmirrors 90, 92 reflect the beam to produce a more compact overalldesign. Final anamorphic imaging lenses 94, 96 produce the final linebeam having a well controlled length and narrow width.

In this embodiment, the lenses 78, 80 for the pyrometer 76 create athermal monitoring beam that is aligned close to the wafer normal andseparated from the activating beam 34 from the GaAs diode laser source26, which is set at a somewhat oblique angle, for example, 30° offnormal. An imaging lens 108 performs the final focusing the GaAs beamover the fairly large activating beam.

Although the above embodiment has utilized CO₂ radiation at about 10.6μm, other wavelengths for the heating radiation may be used. They shouldhave a photon energy less than the silicon bandgap energy, that is, awavelength greater than about 1.2 μm. Typically, the heating wavelengthis greater than about 5 μm. Two specific wavelengths for the activatingradiation have been discussed. Other wavelengths are readily availablein semiconductor diode lasers and may be selected to control the depthof the thermal processing. Generally, however, the photon energy of theactivating radiation needs to be greater than the silicon bandgapenergy, that is, a wavelength less than about 1.0 μm.

Although the description of the invention has assumed that the substrateis a silicon wafer, the invention is not so limited. The invention isadvantageously applied to SOI (silicon on insulator wafers or othersubstrate. With suitable modifications for the activating and heatingwavelengths relative to semiconductor bandgaps, the invention can beapplied to other semiconductor materials. That is, the heatingwavelength is greater than the semiconductor bandgap wavelength and theactivating wavelength is less than the semiconductor bandgap wavelength.

1. A thermal processing system, comprising: a stage configured toreceive a substrate thereon to be thermally processed; a first source ofa first beam of infrared radiation having a wavelength of at least 1.2μm; first optics for directing said first beam to form an elongatedfirst beam of said infrared radiation incident upon said substrate, saidelongated first beam having a first dimension extending along a firstaxis and a second dimension larger than said first dimension extendingalong a second axis transverse to said first axis; a second source of asecond beam of lower-wavelength radiation having a wavelength of lessthan 1 μm; second optics for focusing said second beam to form anincident second beam of lower-wavelength radiation upon said substratewhich surrounds and encompasses said elongated first beam; and atranslation mechanism to scan said elongated first beam and saidincident second beam with each other along said first axis relative tosaid stage so that said incident second beam continues to encompass saidelongated first beam.
 2. The thermal processing system of claim 1,wherein said first and second sources comprise lasers.
 3. The thermalprocessing system of claim 2, wherein said first source comprises a CO₂laser.
 4. The thermal processing system of claim 3, wherein said secondsource comprises at least one diode laser.
 5. The thermal processingsystem of claim 4, wherein said at least one diode laser comprises atleast one GaAs diode laser.
 6. The thermal processing system of claim 4,wherein said at one GaAs diode laser comprises a laser bar includingmultiple diode lasers.
 7. The thermal processing system of claim 1,wherein said first optics comprise an electrically controlled opticaldeflector repetitively scanning said first beam along said second axiswhen it is incident on said substrate.
 8. The thermal processing systemof claim 7, wherein said optical deflector comprises an acousto-opticalmodulator.
 9. The thermal processing system of claim 1, wherein saidfirst optics comprises two parallel reflectors extending along oppositesides of said first beam.
 10. The thermal processing system of claim 9,wherein said first optics comprise an electrically controlled opticaldeflector disposed between said first source and said parallelreflectors repetitively scanning said first beam along said second axiswhen it is incident on said substrate.
 11. The thermal processing systemof claim 10, wherein said optical deflector comprises an acousto-opticalmodulator.
 12. A thermal processing system, comprising: a stageconfigured to receive a substrate thereon to be thermally processed; afirst source of a first beam of optical radiation having a firstwavelength; first optics for directing said first beam to form a firstincident beam incident upon a surface of said substrate; a second sourceof a second beam of optical radiation having a second wavelength smallerthan said first wavelength; second optics for focusing said second beamto form an incident second beam incident upon said surface of saidsubstrate which surrounds said first beam; and a translation mechanismto scan said first and second incident beams about said surface of saidsubstrate such that said first incident beam remains surrounded by saidsecond incident beam.
 13. The thermal processing system of claim 12,wherein a bandgap wavelength of a semiconductor material being processedlies between said first and second wavelengths.
 14. The thermalprocessing system of claim 12, wherein said first source comprises a CO₂laser.
 15. The thermal processing system of claim 12, wherein said firstincident beam comprises an elongated beam having a shorter dimensionalong a first axis and said translation mechanism scans said first andsecond incident beams along said first axis.
 16. The thermal processingsystem of claim 12, wherein said translation mechanism moves said stagein a two-dimensional pattern.
 17. The thermal processing system of claim12, wherein said translation mechanism moves at least parts of saidfirst and second optics.
 18. A thermal processing system, comprising: astage configured to receive a substrate thereon to be thermallyprocessed; a first source of a first beam of infrared radiation having afirst wavelength; a second source of a second beam of lower-wavelengthradiation having a second wavelength less than the first wavelength;optics (a) for directing the first beam to form an elongated first beamof the infrared radiation incident upon the substrate, the elongatedfirst beam having a first dimension extending along a first axis and asecond dimension larger than the first dimension extending along asecond axis transverse to the first axis and (b) for directing thesecond beam to form an incident second beam of lower-wavelengthradiation upon the substrate at least partially coincident with theelongated first beam; and a translation mechanism to scan the elongatedfirst beam and the incident second beam with each other along the firstaxis relative to the stage.
 19. The thermal processing system of claim18, wherein the first wavelength is at least 1.2 μm and the secondwavelength is less than 1 μm.
 20. The thermal processing system of claim19, wherein the first source comprises a CO₂ laser and the second sourcecomprises at least one diode laser.
 21. The thermal processing system ofclaim 18, wherein the translation mechanism causes the incident secondbeam to encompass the elongated first beam.